dealing with my manipulative, controlling and hyper sensitive mum. tell me what you think of this...

[noonar]

it was dd1's seventh birthday party on saturday. she a had a joint disco with a friend and dh and i worked very hard to create a lively fun event, with, unsurprisingly, pop music played at a reasonable volume.

my mum is a totally impractical person, who'd be of no hands-on use at this type of event, but i thought she'd just like to hang out with the children- she's v child centered.

anyway, mum is the ultimate lentil weaver, and spent the whole time with a pained look of disgust on her face. she kept complaining about the music to me and dh and made me feel uncomfortable as she was clearly hating the whole exp, and making me feel responsible for lack of enjoyment. she wouldnt go though, as she said it was her only opportunity to see her neices, who were visiting for the day

at one point i did tell her she could go home if she didnt like it, and that i had worked v hard so wouldve liked to hear some positive comments.

trouble is, i'm really really pissed off with her still... and its dd's actual birthday tomorrow. the inlaws and a couple of neighbours' children are popping in for cake. i simply dont want my mum to be there as i am still annoyed with her.

i just feel that she is a very manipulative person. she often does this. and has a tendency to look sullen and goes silent and weepy if she feels out of her comfort zone at big family gatherings or if something is not to her taste.

i'm fed up with her.

i'd feel bad not to invite her. if i tell her how i feel she'll just spend the whole of dd's tea looking pained and hurt.

any advice??

Your mother behaved very badly indeed . Invite her to DD's birthday, but you need to sit down (at some other time) and explain to her that if she is not going to enjoy a party or other get-together, she ought to refuse the invitation, not sit around spoiling the fun for everyone else.

Are you my sister?
What I have found over the years is that the only way to deal the atmospheres is to pretend you don't notice. Invite her, pretend everything is fine and resolutely ignore any sulkiness - be bright and brisk with her.
I do know how you feel - my mother sulked like this all through my brother's wedding - 'twas awful.

lady, that is terrible! my mum just has no respect for other people's taste or way of doing things.

she is a complete hippy and into a whole load of alternative stuff that i think is twaddle, but i am really respectful (unlike my brothers!) and tactful if expressing a sceptical view of something important to her.

i a just too angry ad upset, anna, to invite hher.

Oh my god my mum does this to.

I'do as LGP says be bright and breezy and ignore her. It makes them feel even worse. Also a fun one is to tell her to snap out of it if she says anything and tell her that if she doesn't like it she can go if she can't join in.

Mine likes to emotionally blackmail me, like her mum did to her. Only problem is I tell her No, so she tries the tears and I've told her that it won't work either.

Take a deep breath and ignore her problems, pretend it's all ok and with any luck she'll start behaving better, but it might take a while.

Good luckxx

paranoid, you know what, my brother and i have pussyfooted round her for too long. this is the last straw. i cannot bring myself to invite her. my brothers are brusque and impatient when she behaves like this, but i have always been more compassionate as she often looks very sad as well as sulky. but i realise know now that that is just part of the manipulation.

i cannot bring myself to invite her. perhaps i will tell her that there will be disco music playing so she better stay away.

i am fuming.

its like years of irritation are suddenly bubbling over.

there've been so many christmasses and events with the in inlaws when she's been sullen and tearful and created tension. making everyone wonder whta they've done wrong. making us feel awkard. she's like a child. all it takes is for someone to make a joke and she takes it the wrong way and she can spoil a whole day.

i am so fed up with her.

tell her! Ive had issues with my mother for years about her manipulative behaviour, which I put up with and pandered too until she pushed it too far last October.
I didnt speak to her for months, and then when we started speaking I would openly tell her when she was being out of order (which was actually quite fun after years of keeping quiet).

Now she is much better behaved and thinks before she speaks makes for a much happier time all round.

The longer you keep quiet the longer the behaviour continues Im afraid

Noonar no advice, but my mum is exactly the same - we all pussyfoot around her, too scared to say anything.

(she cried at one of my children's christening because the in-laws gave us some money for the meal and refused to join in at all for example). she spent my entire childhood in martyrship mode I think.

one day I'll be brave and say something!

mosschops,

i do tell my mum generally when she upsets me, and i do have a bit of a temper at times and get cross with her and then feel bad as she gets SO upset.

the thing is, i have never really felt comfortable about making such fundamental statements about her personality as she is quite vulnerable.

pollyanna, martyr is the word!( i now feel really guilty though, as you are the only one on here who knows me/ mum in RL )

p'raps i shouldve name changed-lol!

oh Im sorry Noonar I didn't mean to make you feel bad. now you know my mum is the same anyway! (and I should name change too as my mum stalks me on here!)

noonar, they just make you feel that theyre vulnerable! Then you never want to say anything and they continue with the controlling, manipulative behaviour. Someone suggested NPD when I was having problems with my mum and suprisingly she fit a lot of the criteria, might be worth a look.

Over the last few months I have said 'and dont bother to turn the tears on because it doesnt work anymore' and the tears and outbursts have become much less.

I think things are better, she struggles with me being so direct and not open to manipulation but it feels good

My Mum does this rubbish too. Its taken me years to realise that I am better off ignoring her tantrums and not getting drawn into the game. Over time I have managed to see less and less of her which has been important to my mental health but also its important to me because I don't want my DC to get sucked into the madness !

Totally identify with this. It's doubled to comical effect when my gran visits, as you get two generations of it on one sofa - both doing the 'tight lipped martyr who nobody loves enough to entertain properly' act.

My gran is welcome to it - she's 85 and can behave how she likes. My mum, I just ignore. The rest of the family are cheerful, breezy people and I just treat my mum as if she was also cheerful and breezy, ignoring any eye rolls or scowls.

She did the whole 'borderline crying for no apparent reason' routine at a family wedding which has ruined what should have been happy memories for all of us.

If she isn't doing the silent suffering act, she's openly saying why she isn't happy, usually on some lentil based, non-organic grounds. She refused to eat her dinner at my stepbrothers wedding becuase the thinks that non organic vegetables contain too much pesticides, and informed everybody else of this at our table.

Ignore! Ignore! Ignore! Just think, how lucky are we to be the cheerful people who everybody likes, instead of the moaning, difficult cow who everybody has to tolerate purely out of duty.

Why do some women (and in my family it's always women) get so much apparent validation from vuluntarily turning up to events they know they will hate, in order to openly and loudly hate being there?

Does anybody have any phsychological insight into this problem?

voluntarily

psychological - aargh!

I think it's not fair on daughter to have a sulky granny hanging around. I think if you do invite her then I wouldn't mention her behaviour before the birthday tea, but I would mention it sometime soon and insist that in future if she's invited to a celebratory event that she either puts on a smily cheerful face or stays at home.
I definitely wouldn't invite her to another childrens party.

Mine can be like this. I try ignoring it but she repeats whatever snide / nasty remark it is again. So I ignore again, she repeats again etc etc.

I saw something on the Stately Homes thread I think about doing a mental 'bullshit/martyr bingo' card in your head and marking each phrase / action off as your mom does them, apparently it makes it much more bearable

I wouldn't tolerate nasty remarks. I wouldn't tolerate them from someone who wasn't in the family so why should I from someone who is? Thankfully I have fairly sensible pleasant relatives, but if one did start making nasty comments I would pick her up on it and tell them I find their comments hurtful and that if they're going to be nasty I'd rather they left/I left. Why do some of you put up with this? It really isn't necessary to spend alot of time with people who don't like you/ don't respect you.

interesting replies. very interesting.

and morris, lol, to use ladyglen's phrase 'you must be my sister'! i thought my mum was the only one to spout that kind of crap about organic food!

i'm too tired to go into details, but she did come to have birthday cake and made everyone feel uncomfortable AGAIN with her pained- near-crying-expression. actually, forget near crying, when she left, she WAS crying. in front of my in laws. i was mortified.

and the reason for ths upset? she could tell i was being a bit frosty with her and asked if she'd upset me. when no one else was around, i stupidly said that i was hurt by her negative comments re the disco. she retorted very defensively that she felt extremely overwhelmed by the whole disco thing and had never been to an event like it in her life... hence justifying her behaviour (to herself, anway).

am still livid...

It was my daughters 2nd birthday recently, and once all the children arrived MIL went downstairs into the kitchen, where DH was making sandwiches, (which was absolutlely fine in itself), but said there were ''too many people''.
There were only 6 toddlers and their mothers.
She then sits there quietly , creating an atmosphere.
She's awkward , has favourite sons, openly prefers her grandsons to grandaughters.

If your mum's creating an atmosphere and making snide, manipulative comments, of course that's not on, and you need to think about excluding her from your DD's actual birthday celebrations to avoid there being an atmosphere. The ignoring sounds good, as a future way of handling it, and chatting with her - if you think she'll be half-receptive - makes sense.

I'll play devil's advocate here and say that it is possible for some people to simply hate these kind of events - big groups of people, lots of noise, etc. They can feel disapproved of if they don't go and guilty, because they feel they should be there and should be able to handle it - but when they do go, they can find it genuinely difficult to enjoy themselves and get into the spirit of things. When people have social anxiety, for example. A sort-of relative is borderline with this: I know, and understand, that she is painfully shy, which makes socialising very difficult for her. I can be compassionate on that score. Where it gets murky is that she sits there with a face like a slapped arse and not talking, and that can create tension - I think she's trying to avoid having to engage in conversation (which she finds very difficult), and it works! But at a price.

It's tricky. All I'm suggesting is that there's possibly a grey area with this kind of thing - involving social anxiety, highly sensitive types and the like, who are trying to muddle along and be 'normal'. They're not always manipulative ... but I realise some (your mother included, by the sounds of it) definitely are!

scrumplet, i think that you are spot on. there is an element of anxiety, here. she is seems to find the group dynamic really , really hard when not on her own territory.

perhaps the complaining about the disco was an attempt to mask her true feelings ie if she can find fault with the party, then she doesnt have to acknowledge the real reason why she felt uncomfortable. namely, feeling not needed, not knowing how to help, and feeling out of her comfort zone.

..but how do i move on with this? dh and i are both united in feeling taht we dont want any more big family xmases etc, largely due to the sorts of tensions i've described.

my mum has a good friend who 'doent do groups'. she admits taht she simply cant handle them and didnt come to my wedding for that reason. i have alot of respect for her honestly, actually.

why does my mum have to make it OUR fault when she feels uncomfortable??